1. The Field of the Invention
This invention relates to apparatus, systems, and methods for fabricating resin panels comprising decorative objects and interlayers, which can serve structural and/or aesthetic purposes.
2. Background and Relevant Art
Recent trends in building design involve adding to or changing the functional and/or aesthetic characteristics of a given structure or design space by mounting one or more decorative panels thereto. This is at least partly since there is sometimes more flexibility with how the panel (or set of panels) is designed, compared with the original structure. Panels formed from resin materials are particularly popular because they tend to be less expensive, in most applications, than materials such as glass or the like, where certain structural, optical, and aesthetic characteristics are desired.
In addition, resin materials tend to be more flexible in terms of manufacture and assembly because they can be relatively easily bent, molded, colored, shaped, cut, and otherwise modified in a variety of different ways. Decorative resins can also provide more flexibility compared with glass and other conventional materials at least in terms of color, degree of texture, gauge, and impact resistance. Additionally, decorative resins have a fairly wide utility since they can include a large variety of colors, images, interlayers, and shapes.
Along these lines, manufacturers commonly fabricate decorative resin panels by embedding non-resin decorative objects between extruded sheets of resin material. To embed decorative objects with resin sheets, manufacturers typically melt two or more resin sheets around the decorative objects using a combination of pressure and heat. The final product therefore typically comprises decorative objects positioned between two viewable surfaces of the final decorative resin panel, through which the decorative object are visible. Manufacturers primarily embed substantially thin or flat “two-dimensional” objects, such as flattened leaves, ferns, papers, cutout designs, fabrics, and so forth within resin panels, due to manufacturing complications that can arise when embedding thicker three-dimensional objects. Thus, a manufacturer's design choices are often limited to substantially flat or thin decorative objects, or using more complicated manufacturing processes.
One manufacturing complication that can arise when embedding thicker three-dimensional objects is a difficulty in obtaining flat and uniform viewable surfaces on the resin panel. In particular, as the resin sheets melt around thicker objects, the molten material fills gaps between the objects, leaving the visible surface bulging or bowing around the objects. Another manufacturing complication that can arise when embedding thicker objects is the crushing and/or flattening of the decorative objects during the pressing process, particularly when the objects are soft or brittle. Manufacturers have attempted to address these problems on one level or another through a multi-step heating and pressing process, which can lead to increased manufacturing cost and time.